Wood says table-topping Saints still not satisfied with performances

Tom Vickers

They have also qualified for knockout stages of European Challenge and LV= Cups

Wood insists he and his team-mates are still not happy with how they are playing

Tom Wood has revealed ‘hard home truths’ are keeping Saints fired up in their pursuit of the treble.

Jim Mallinder’s men are now 12 points clear at the top of the Aviva Premiership and have reached the knock-out stages of the Champions Cup and LV= Cup.

They have won their past four games, with the latest success a 17-13 victory over Harlequins at Franklin’s Gardens last Friday.

But Wood, who came off the bench to grab a crucial third try in that game, is adamant he and his team-mates are not satisfied with their performance levels.

And he believes their policy of brutal honesty can ensure they keep their trophy ambitions alive.

“The best thing about it is that we’re winning some of these games, we’re in the semi-final of the LV= Cup, in the quarter-final of the Champions Cup and we’re still pretty disappointed with performances, very ambitious and being hard on ourselves,” said the England star.

“We know we’ve got lots to work on and the boys are honest with each other.

“We’ve got that group now that we’ve been together a long time and we can look each other in the eye and say ‘that wasn’t good enough’.

“You give some pretty hard home truths, move on and keep building.

“It’s great that we’re 12 points clear, we’re in a great place, we’ve got the luxury of rotating some players, keeping people fresh and hopefully we can peak at the right time.”

Saints, who travel to Gloucester on Saturday, have six games left of the regular Premiership season remaining.

And when asked what the biggest challenge will be, Wood said: “Sustaining it and making sure there’s no complacency.

“You’re not conscious of it but maybe you see a little bit of it creep in.

“London Irish, we should beat them on paper. If you look at the form of the two teams last Friday, we should beat them (Harlequins) convincingly and we just don’t quite manage to do it.

“Credit to Quins for getting in amongst us and putting in a good performance, but a lot of the blame lies with us.

“You’ve got to be hard on yourself, you’ve got to look at the detail and lineouts went astray, ball retention, things like that.

“You don’t build pressure and build a score if things like that don’t go your way.

“We’ll be really hard on ourselves, try to eradicate any sign of complacency and make sure we go down and do a job on Gloucester.”